Since thinking about playing the Goldberg Variations with two guitars, I imagined them in black and white. It’s not a matter of playing with the intent of restoring the colors of an epoch, but rather to capture what remains, what resists time.Initially there was more of a passionate desire than intellectual, an attraction towards something that, on the face of it, wasn’t meant for one to do. Because even if the harpsichord and guitar do have something in common in the nature of their sound curve, the respective possibilities are very different.We therefore wanted to create an encounter between our instruments and the work of art without ever going against their nature. So we chose the ranges, tempos, and the ornaments for their feasibility, efficiency, and guitar-like musicality. And we have never played against the piece either, keeping its intrinsic form and nature.The idea of the transcription was customary of the time period. We carried out the ideas initiated by the great American musician and musicologist Rosalyn Tureck, who said that Bach’s music, essentially abstract, can circulate from instrument to instrument. A number of examples exist showing that Bach himself played his own pieces on various instruments, with each version bringing its own interpretation to the work.Working together on the Goldberg Variations, as with all chamber music, involved the two of us to acquire a common reflex. So in this way, without going into too much detail about the form or line of approach, we let these variations inhabit us little by little. The idea of having a uniform sound wasn’t our first concern. Rather we looked to bring our differences to life harmoniously.Bach’s music is a refined synthesis of all occidental music that had been created before him. And the Goldberg Variations are a brilliant synthesis of Bach’s work of art.If this music is so lively, it is because it arouses the desire to dive into the era of its creation to get closer to the “truth” as much as the desire to capture it and to continue to add to this indestructible edifice.Sébastien Llinares

J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations | transcription for guitar duet

Like many others during his time, Bach very often practiced adaptation and transcription of sheet music by his contemporaries as well as his own works. Although sensitive to the texture of voices and instruments, he didn’t hesitate to have his own work undergo a metamorphosis proper to breathe new life into them. It is true that the density and the rigor of his contrapuntal writing lend themselves to other interpretations, into renewed colors which are able to reveal, up to that point, neglected facets. Like The Art of fugue, the Goldberg Variations have also led to many transcriptions. However, from the picked strings of the harpsichord to the guitar, the distance is minor compared to the one between the piano and the organ, or even among an instrumental ensemble. In a unity of colors, the lines acquire an autonomy of nuances here that the harpsichord keys alone couldn’t express. Inexhaustible treasures of masterpieces…